My estoc struck directly into the Jack-o'-Lantern's neck.
CRACK!
The pleasant resistance of crushing something tough and hard ran up my wrist.
The Jack-o'-Lantern distorted its vicious features and shuddered.
Its struggles, from a body over three meters tall, naturally threw my own body around.
I had to decide whether to press on despite the danger or retreat for safety.
Watching the desire to keep overwhelming it like a storm, I made my choice.
WHOOSH!
Retreat (a backward step).
I lightly stepped back and pulled out the estoc.
Competitive spirit was good, but greed was bad.
There was no need to overextend myself against an opponent I had just met on a stage rather than a real battlefield.
The fact that my choice was correct became clear immediately after I retreated.
SHWAAAK!
[“-----!”]
The Jack-o'-Lantern twisted its body as though making one final desperate struggle and swung its four thorny whips in every direction.
If I had remained within five meters of it, I would not have had a bone left intact.
Blink, blink, blink!
Then the orange light spilling through its eyes, nose, and mouth from within its pumpkin-lantern head blinked ominously.
BOOOOM!
An explosion followed.
Fragments of the pumpkin head burst in every direction like grenade shrapnel in a game.
I had been about to take a defensive stance, but instead threw myself to the floor to avoid them.
There were too many fragments to block with a sword.
It seemed I would have needed to get at least fifteen meters away to be completely safe.
“Hoo.”
THUD.
The headless Jack-o'-Lantern staggered, then collapsed to the floor.
“Was that a success?”
I turned toward Hong Si-yu and Ji In-hwi.
“…….”
“……!?”
The two Hunters wore deeply troubled expressions.
The moment I saw their discomfort, I understood.
I had often seen such expressions from coaches during training in the past.
‘Jae-ha, you did well, but……’
Like when I swept through the entire opposing side alone in an all-kill sparring format, leaving the people behind me unable to swing their swords even once.
It seemed I had met coaches with a good eye, both then and now.
“……You did very well.”
“So you mean the strategy of hitting and withdrawing repeatedly, attacks that induced knockback, and the evasion of the final explosion. All of it was excellent.”
Hunter Ji In-hwi forced a smile and nodded.
“As a reward for taking the initiative, I will give you five Attitude Points.”
He gave me the Attitude Points as promised.
“Thank you.”
After bowing deeply, I set down the estoc and stepped off the stage.
“Could he have watched hunting videos?”
“If watching them were enough, newcomer death rates would not be that high. Someone who has not done it before can never pull that off.”
“But he did.”
“He must be familiar with swordsmanship itself.”
I faintly heard Hong Si-yu and Ji In-hwi whispering.
“Wow! That Hyung is seriously amazing.”
“That Scorpion bastard said he was going to win and all that, but it was all bullshit. Even his movements were completely different.”
Their voices were soon drowned out by the cheers of the Awakened gathered here.
“Jeong Jae-ha! Jeong Jae-ha!”
My name was chanted, and whistles sounded from every direction.
I raised one hand in response.
The voices calling my name and the admiring gazes directed at me were utterly intoxicating.
“That is fucking scary. With that skill, he cut people down, did he not?”
“Is he not the only murderer here? Can a murderer be a model inmate?”
“The people who died then were people I knew……”
There were quite a few whispers of condemnation too, but I could ignore them.
It felt like I had returned to my days as an athlete.
Then I felt a gaze following me strangely persistently.
The delicate-looking person with slightly curly, dark-black hair.
The one who had been with Kim Gang-o's group was staring at me with an utterly entranced look.
They were staring so openly that I met their gaze without realizing it.
Eyes sparkling like sunlight shattered against waves.
“……!”
They flinched and turned away.
“Huh?”
That was when I saw it.
As they turned, the distinctive line of a sports bra showed at their side.
Could that be possible?
The prison had separated men and women from the beginning.
They must have been together for at least several months, so I did not know how they had avoided being caught.
No, perhaps they were simply a pervert.
Considering the backgrounds of the people here, that possibility was overwhelmingly more likely.
“All right. From now on, we will begin Anti-Demon Beast Swordsmanship in earnest. As Fencer Jeong just demonstrated, thrusting is fundamentally important.”
Of course, I had no time to think about what sort of story that person might have.
“Demon Beast bones and muscles are difficult to cut even with the strength of a typical body-enhancement Awakened. So you use a longsword to thrust at the joints, nerves, lungs……”
I had an obligation to attend these classes properly to enter Saetbyeol Guild.
“……There will be a Tutorial one month from now. By then, you must be able to kill at least Jack-o'-Lanterns using only swords. Once those things start absorbing flames and exploding, they become truly impossible to handle.”
Creeeak.
At that moment, Kim Gang-o returned during the practical lesson.
The infirmary must have been a good one.
“Fuck.”
He could not even look in my direction.
***
There were around a thousand people in this cohort of the Rehabilitation Hunter Service Program. We were divided into five groups of two hundred and attended various classes.
First, there was Social Adjustment Education, which taught us how the world had changed while we had been in prison.
“All right, everyone. Why must we not deceive others……?”
I expected to hear things like an elementary-school ethics class, and that was exactly what happened.
Of course, considering people like Kim Gang-o, perhaps more than half of those here truly needed to learn that first, so I could not complain too much.
“Good work last class. If they pushed the curriculum forward more instead of wasting time on that, everyone could get employed faster and earn Magic Stones.”
All the other classes were useful.
“Those Gate Management Ministry bastards are all slackers. All right. So today, we will learn a treatment for dislocations that can set both dislocated bones and wayward spirits. Kim Gang-o. Up front.”
“What?”
“All right. Before the practical session, I will first dislocate Student Kim Gang-o's shoulder.”
“No, no, no…… Aaaagh!”
There was first-aid class, where we learned reduction techniques for setting broken or dislocated bones, hemostasis to stop bleeding, and several other forms of field medicine.
The class was run by a Hunter dressed like a plague doctor, who used only former violent criminals as teaching aids.
“Lee Hae-il.”
“Number 244, Lee Hae-il!”
“Good. You set it well.”
That delicate-looking person, whom I suspected of being either a woman disguised as a man or someone with an unusual sexual fetish, was unexpectedly an ace.
I did fairly well too.
“Fencer Jeong did well too. Did you study sports rehabilitation?”
“Yes.”
“National representatives really are different. One Attitude Point!”
In any case, I had spent more than three years practicing the best of modern rehabilitation medicine with a doctor, so it was familiar work.
“Gates are subspaces from which Demon Beasts emerge. Each has its own rules and strategies for clearing them……”
There were also hunting-theory classes about Demon Beasts, Magic Stones, and Gates, as well as swordsmanship classes that I enjoyed.
Perhaps because Hong Si-yu emphasized them again and again, quite a few Awakened showed enthusiasm.
“Argh!”
Lee Hae-il did too.
They stayed behind even after class ended and swung a metal practice sword.
Then they struck their own knee hard. If it had been a real sword, their leg would have been at least half cut through.
A quick look showed that their grip was the problem.
I itched to tell them.
“Um……”
How welcome it was to see someone work hard at something I loved.
Of course, they appeared to be one of that gangster Kim Gang-o's group, but my creed was that there were no bad people among those who liked swords.
Kim Gang-o was not a person, so he was excluded.
Then perhaps Lee Hae-il could be rehabilitated too.
“The grip.”
“Yes?”
“Relax your hand and hold the lower part as though you are cupping it.”
I tossed those words out as I left the gymnasium.
“Yes, Hyung!”
“When did I become your Hyung?”
An enthusiastic answer came back.
It did not feel bad.
Judging by the sensation of the muscles around my cheekbones rising, it might have felt quite good.
“All right, fire!”
RATATATAT!
The final class was shooting.
The shooting class was unusual in that it used submachine guns like MP5s rather than rifles like K2s.
“Rifles like those will be carried by the ordinary Hunters following behind you.”
We were even taught to shoot with our left hands rather than our right.
“Why are you learning to shoot? So that when little ones suddenly swarm you while you are cutting things with a sword, you can spray them down. It cannot interfere with swinging your sword.”
That was the one class in which I did not receive points.
“Fencer Jeong has something he cannot do too?”
No. I did not merely fail to receive points. I was simply last.
“No. How does someone even make this look like this?”
The instructor gave an awkward smile when he saw my submachine gun during the disassembly and assembly exercise.
“Even if I told you to make it look like that on purpose, you could not.”
My submachine gun had taken the shape of a warped idol of an ancient god.
It was unfair.
I had clearly followed the instructions on the PPT in front of me. Why had this happened?
“I am sorry. I am technologically hopeless. I have no confidence in handling any device more complicated than a fencing mask.”
I threw up both hands.
I could pull a trigger somehow, but I could not manage maintenance such as disassembly and assembly.
Come to think of it, I had broken quite a few BB guns as a child too.
“There is no helping it.”
In the end, I gave up on shooting.
In truth, shooting had given up on me, but I said I had given up on it at least.
My allies would be safer if I did not touch guns.
I could earn more points in swordsmanship instead.
Two weeks passed like that.
“Was it here that I was supposed to enter?”
I slowly operated the app and checked my points.
“Wow, Hyung. How many points have you gathered already?”
“Thirty points for medals, five points for the first day of swordsmanship practice, three points in first aid, one point in theory class, plus more from swordsmanship…… Forty-three points total.”
I had already gathered half of the eighty-five points I needed.
Kim Gang-o had ten points.
Of course, I could not relax.
I had practically given up on the points available in shooting-related subjects.
I needed more points to be completely at ease.
Ding.
[Hunter Hong Si-yu: Fencer Jeong.]
[Hunter Hong Si-yu: Could we talk briefly before dinner?]
A message arrived through the app then.
***
“Did you call for me?”
I went up to the top floor of the center.
“Has your leg been all right lately?”
“I expect it will gradually improve.”
“With Fencer Jeong's skill, you will recover quickly.”
Hong Si-yu sat on a large sofa in a spacious room.
Her short red hair looked remarkably lively, but I remembered the sight of her breathing fire.
“I have flown around here and there too, so I know. Catching even a few dozen Demon Beasts will make it much better.”
My profile was displayed on a monitor at one side of the room.
“After seeing you catch that Golem, I do not think it will take long. Once you finish the Tutorial and spend a month or two working, your leg will fully recover after catching just a hundred Jack-o'-Lanterns.”
“I hope that is true.”
“If you are lucky enough to catch something like a Lesser Dragon, you might recover in one go.”
She glanced at the monitor and spoke about my leg.
At first, I thought it was small talk to ease the awkward atmosphere, but as I listened, it was fairly serious advice.
“Even now, it does not seem to be in a very bad condition. Is that right?”
“I can keep up with the training well enough. Even sprinting for around five minutes is not a problem.”
“That is a relief. I was actually going to make a proposal.”
“What proposal?”
It seemed to lead directly into her main point.
“Fencer Jeong, you must have noticed at least a few trainees who show talent in swordsmanship.”
“Yes. There are a few.”
“If we gather them from all over, there will be several dozen, right?”
“Probably. More than that.”
“Could you gather only those trainees and run something like an after-school program in the afternoons? Honestly, you are far better at swordsmanship than our instructors.”
The proposal felt extremely good.
When I went to prison, many people condemned me.
They asked whether it was right for an athlete to take up a weapon against ordinary people.
I did not know whether gangsters were ordinary people, but setting that aside, it was virtually impossible to subdue multiple armed opponents alone with bare hands.
There truly had been no other choice if I was to protect my sister and myself.
They argued that even if I were released, I should be barred from coaching work. I privately thought that was likely to happen.
Was that not an era when even the mere fact that there was controversy became controversial?
Yet now, a remarkable Awakened leading a government project was asking me to teach others how to use swords.
The situation itself was deeply satisfying to me.
“Ah, of course I am not saying we will make Fencer Jeong work for free.”
Hong Si-yu even seemed prepared to pay my proper value.
“Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Two hours each day after dinner. Two hundred and fifty thousand won per hour, for one and a half million won per week. What do you think?”
A weekly pay of 1.5 million won came to nearly 80 million won annually.
That was the rate for a popular instructor at a major fencing club.
Even if they were formally hiring “gold medalist Jeong Jae-ha,” it was a reasonable price.
Besides, I was homeless and without possessions now.
My home had been in Seoul, and Seoul was now overrun by Demon Beasts.
I would need to rent at least a studio apartment to find Chae-ha and live with her. If I could earn nearly three million won during the two weeks before the Tutorial, I would be truly grateful.
“And I will add some more points too. Since you have no Hunter career, I need to set it at the external-instructor level, so it feels a little embarrassing.”
On top of that, Hong Si-yu said she would give me more points.
It was a chance to fully make up for the points I had lost in shooting class.